The Testimony of Raphael Golb According to the New York Times

The Times does a great job of reporting the testimony and pointing out the irrelevancy of the bulk of it.

Mr. Golb spent much of his nearly three hours on the witness stand defending the theory of his father, Norman Golb, a professor at the University of Chicago, that the scrolls were kept in various libraries in Jerusalem until they were hidden during the Roman war of A.D. 67 to 73 in the caves where they were found more than a half-century ago. … This academic debate provided an underlying — though not extremely relevant — theme to the case, as Mr. Golb drifted into lengthy dissertations that implored the jurors, if nothing else, to agree with his father’s theory.

And that, in sum, is all that Golb is concerned with doing. Even on trial, he can’t resist promoting his dad’s viewpoint.

He criticized many in the academic community for dismissing his father’s theories and trying to silence him.

Silence him? Hardly. N. Golb teaches at the University of Chicago and has a wide readership and lofty perch from which to share his ideas. They are widely rejected because idiosyncratic and unsustainable. He’s hardly the poor marginalized nobody R. Golb is acting like he is.

Mr. Golb, who said he spoke Spanish, French and Italian, and could read Latin and German, and danced Argentine tango in his free time, told the jury that, for him, the debate was not about money. It was about the greater good of academia.

Bit of a self absorbed guy, isn’t he? What does any of that have to do with the issue at hand? Nothing. But it does show what kind of person he is.